Welcome
Installation Guide
Learn the system requirements, licensing and installation instructions, and how to configure and maintain BigFix.
Managing relays
Relays can significantly improve the performance of your installation.
Relay requirements and recommendations
Generally, a relay uses minimal resources and does not have a noticeable impact on the performance of the computer running it.

BigFix Documentation Homepage
BigFix 11 Platform Documentation
Welcome to the BigFix Platform documentation, where you can find information about how to install, maintain, and use BigFix.
Detailed system requirements
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Platform guides in PDF format
Following is a list of links to the BigFix Platform user guides in PDF format:
Common Criteria Certification
BigFix 10.0.1.41 complies with the requirements of the standard ISO/IEC 15408 (Common Criteria) v. 3.1 for the assurance level: EAL2
Getting Started
Use this section to become familiar with BigFix infrastructure and key concepts necessary to understand how it works.
HTTPS across BigFix applications
This topic describes how the SSL/HTTPS communication works in BigFix applications and links the tasks on how to configure it.
Installation Guide
Learn the system requirements, licensing and installation instructions, and how to configure and maintain BigFix.
- Introduction
  BigFix aims to solve the increasingly complex problem of keeping your critical systems updated, compatible, and free of security issues. It uses patented Fixlet technology to identify vulnerable computers in your enterprise. With just a few mouse-clicks you can remediate them across your entire network from a central console.
- BigFix Platform Unicode Support Overview
  BigFix Platform V11 gathers data from BigFix clients deployed with different code pages and languages. It encodes all data into UTF-8 format, and reports it back to the BigFix server.
- Sample deployment scenarios
  The following deployment scenarios illustrate some basic configurations taken from actual case studies.
- Requirements and assumptions
  BigFix runs efficiently using minimal server, network, and client resources.
- Types of installation
  Before you install the product, decide if you want to do an evaluation or production installation.
- Managing licenses
  You must obtain a license key before you can install and use BigFix.
- Before installing
  Before running the installation make sure that you read the following topics and run the requested activities if needed.
- Installing on Windows systems
  Now that you understand the terms and the administrative roles, you are ready to get authorized and install the programs.
- Installing on Linux systems
  After understanding the terms and the administrative roles, you are ready to actually get authorized and install the programs.
- Installing the clients
  Install the BigFix client on every computer in your network that you want to administer, including the computer that is running the console.
- BigFix Administration Tool
  The BigFix Administration Tool, also called BESAdmin, is the tool we use to perform configuration changes and maintenance operations.
- Post-installation configuration steps
  After having run the installation, make sure that you read the following topics and run the requested activities if needed.
- Managing relays
  Relays can significantly improve the performance of your installation.
  - Relay requirements and recommendations
    Generally, a relay uses minimal resources and does not have a noticeable impact on the performance of the computer running it.
  - Setting up a relay
    To set up a relay, you must designate a Windows, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, or Solaris computer that is running a client to act as the relay.
  - Installing and upgrading a relay from the command line
    You can install or upgrade a relay from the command line using the setup.exe installer command.
  - Assigning relays to clients
    When you have set up a relay you must direct BigFix clients on your network to gather from that relay, instead of from your server.
  - Adjusting the BigFix Server and Relays
    To get the best performance from BigFix, you might need to adjust the server and the relays.
  - Assigning a relay when the server is unreachable
    After you install the client, it connects to and registers with the main BigFix server.
  - Viewing which relay is assigned to a client
    How to see which clients are selecting which relays.
  - Viewing the relay chain on the client
    Starting from Version 9.5 Patch 13, the capability to view the relay chain on a specific BigFix client was added to the product.
- Introduction to Tiny Core Linux - BigFix Virtual Relay
  Follow the step-by-step sequence of operations needed to build the virtual machine, from the downloading of the ISO image to the complete setup and configuration of the BigFix Virtual Relay.
- Setting up a proxy connection
  If your enterprise uses a proxy to access the Internet, your BigFix environment can use that communication path to gather content from sites.
- Running backup and restore
  You can schedule periodic backups (typically nightly) of the BigFix server and database files, to reduce the risk of losing productivity or data when a problem occurs by restoring the latest backup.
- Upgrading
  The steps to upgrade the BigFix Platform.
- SQL Server parallelism optimization
  The performance of an SQL Server database instance can often be improved by small tweaks. Performance might also be hindered by simple oversights. In fact, some SQL Server parallelism settings have suboptimal default values. Moreover, they have to be re-tuned after an hardware upgrade. Other issues might arise from inadvertent hardware configurations, especially when SQL Server is hosted on a virtual machine (VM).
- Known limitations and workarounds
  This section describes the known limitations and possible workarounds.
- Logging
  This section describes the log files associated with the BigFix components.
- Uninstalling the BigFix client
  To uninstall the BigFix client installed on the various operating systems, see the following sections.
Configuration Guide
Learn how to configure BigFix according to your needs.
Console Operator's Guide
Learn how to work with the BigFix Console.
Asset Discovery User's Guide
Learn how BigFix Asset Discovery works.
Web Reports Guide
Learn how the Web Reports feature extends the power of BigFix.
BigFix Explorer Guide
Learn how the BigFix Explorer feature extends the power of BigFix.
WebUI User's Guide
Read this guide for an introduction to the WebUI tools, concepts, and terminology.
WebUI Administration Guide
Read this guide for information about installing and administering the WebUI.
Glossary
This glossary provides terms and definitions for the Modern Client Management for BigFix software and products.

Relay requirements and recommendations

Generally, a relay uses minimal resources and does not have a noticeable impact on the performance of the computer running it.

However, if several clients simultaneously request files from a relay, a significant amount of the computer's resources might be used to serve those files.

The requirements for a relay computer vary widely depending on three main factors:

The number of connected clients that are downloading files.
The size of each download.
The period of time allotted for the downloads.

For details about the relay system requirements, see BigFix 11 - Detailed System Requirements.

Note: On Linux computers in which the deployment port is not the default (52311), an installation of Perl is required for the relay functions to work as expected.

Here are some further recommendations:

Computers running the relays must have BigFix agent installed.
Configure the internet-facing relays in your BigFix deployment as authenticating relays.
Workgroup file servers and other server-quality computers that are always turned on are good candidates for installing a relay.
The BigFix relay must have a two-way TCP connection to its parent (which can be a server or another relay).
For BigFix Version 10 GA, the Fixlet to install the relay requires at least Internet Explorer 5.0 or later versions to work correctly. For BigFix Version 10 Patch 1 and later, this requirement is no longer needed.
The BigFix relay cache size can be configured, but is set to 1GB by default. It is recommended that you have at least 2 GB available for the relay cache to prevent hard drive bottlenecks.
It is recommended to have at least one Relay per geographic location for bandwidth reasons.
Consider throttling the bandwidth usage for Relays downloading files on very slow pipes. It is recommended to throttle the bandwidth usage for Clients that are connecting on dial-up or slow VPN connections. For more information about bandwidth throttling, see https://bigfix-wiki.hcltechsw.com/wikis/home?lang=en-us#!/wiki/BigFix%20Wiki/page/Bandwidth%20Throttling.